Seeking a way to cut down on their print waste and associated costs, The Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust needed a solution that would not disrupt its existing systems or employee working practices.
The Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust is comprised of seven sites forming one citywide organisation, employing over 22,000 staff and treating 1.5 million patients - with emergency patients making up more than 200,000 of those per year.
The Trust is a regional centre for a range of services including cancer, neurosurgery, heart surgery, liver, and kidney transplantation as well as providing a major trauma centre for the region.
In order to continue delivering the best possible healthcare service to their patients, the Trust needed a cost-effective update to their printing infrastructure. Furthermore, they needed to drive down their print output to reduce costs and wastage. 
The Trust also had an issue with storage, as large quantities of documents were being printed as part of the previous contract and needed storage space within the Trust which was at a premium. This created significant problems following an update to the Trust’s standard documentation, since large quantities of unprocessed documentation became obsolete overnight - generating further waste in terms of paper, costs, and space.
To ensure a seamless transition that would not require staff re-training, Leeds Teaching needed a modern solution that would integrate with their existing user interface, Oracle.
Working together with Apogee, the OneSource Web2Print print portal was installed behind the scenes - with automatic workflows to give staff the ability to effectively print on-demand, and upload updated or new documents into the print portal system; all whilst maintaining the required link to the PEPPOL network. Requested documents are then printed at Apogee’s secure Outsourced Document Services facility, for delivery into the various Trust locations around the city – an average of 109 document bundles a week.
With over 1600 live documents currently stored, indexed, and available on the portal, NHS staff are able to easily locate and access specific files at a moment’s notice, enabling them to be productive. OneSource also allows NHS managers to run reports on the frequency and quantity of documents being requested, to help identify trends which could lead to further cost reductions in the future.
Additionally, a dedicated Disaster Recovery Plan has been put in place to preserve the Trust’s document security measures, even in the event of any unforeseen circumstances.
Following the initial installation, continual iterations were rolled out and trialled, then improved upon continually over four months, with an overlapping period of two months for data cleansing to ensure complete alignment between the new solution and existing systems.
Throughout the implementation, teams across procurement, suppliers and medical illustration worked together with Apogee while the changeover in suppliers was embedded. Whenever there was an issue raised that needed a solution, teams from LTH and Apogee were able to communicate effectively to overcome these and to provide learnings for the future.
Naturally during the introduction of a new process there were orders that were held up on either side, for example due to sign off issues with new materials produced by LTH. Rather than this becoming a permanent bottleneck in the end-to-end process, both sides worked together and met regularly to understand how to streamline these new orders so that there were no unnecessary delays. This has ensured that there is a clear understanding of expectations for all parties and where any new issues are identified, these are now easily solved.
Ease of use amongst Trust staff has also been enhanced, due to the accessibility of an online document repository – which allows them to easily retrieve the correct information when they need it and provide a dynamic service to patients. This repository has also helped to increase document security measures, as well as continuity in case of potential disaster.
In addition to these key benefits, the simple nature of the print order process has had the effect of waste reduction in terms of overall wastage of paper and costings, while maintaining their PEPPOL accreditation – which ensures compliance with regulations relating to secure and rapid transfer of electronic documents.
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